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In spite of the continuous informational stress the employees are subjected, we believe that their work must and can be done in a calm and relaxed environment. We made a creed out of this and we called it "Zenify"; a philosophy behind, designing and building digital workspaces, a name that means for us to do something to be zen.

A "zenified" digital workspace is that one built around the employee and his topics of interest, unlike a classical architecture oriented on categories and "silos" of information. For each subject of interest, the employee needs to find answers for three issues related to that particular topic: "why," "what," and "how."

So, he is primarily motivated (why) by the image of the finality and the effects of his action.

Then he understands what falls under his responsibility and with who else has to collaborate to complete the process (what).What has to be done is shown in a customized way on the intranet's first page of his account. By modifying the flagging here, makes the initiator to know that the task has been completed or is in a certain stage of work.

Same time he gets consolidated, on a unique page, all the information needed in order to do what has to be done (how) without the need of repeated and difficult searches that often do not bring the desired results. In a unique place, selected after the topic of interest, he finds relevant information in the form of: procedures, news, rules, contacts, etc. Additionally, by feedback mechanisms on the same topic, he receives the reactions from colleagues and internal clients.

This is how a digital workspace built with a "Zenify" approach works, a "zenified" digital workspace.

What benefits does it brings?

The employees' digital experience becomes more valuable. They find the information they need much more easier because somebody was concerned about this. Companies spend large amounts of money to attract and retain employees, offering good work conditions. A better digital experience is included in this broader approach.

The processes are running better, with fewer errors. Changes are implemented smoothly at lower costs and the good practices are easily adopted.This makes the organization itself to be more flexible and more efficient.

There are two important moments regarding a change: the first, when occurs and the other when becomes relevant to you, affecting your work.

The first is unique in the entire organization and takes advantage of wide resources and of an almost general mobilization to ensure its communication. The second is an individual one, for each when the current tasks make him facing the change in question. Unfortunately, that time the mobilization related to the introduction of the change passed and you have to handle the situation alone.

In order to manage the introduction of changes in a natural and effective manner, strategies are needed for both types of moments. If for the first type the things are quite clear, being accesible a wide experience and bibliografy about how and what things should be done, in respect to the second, the sources of information are not so rich.

We have worked with organizations with more than 10,000 employees and we’ve been able to implement major changes fast and with light efforts. Here are some ideas developed during these implementations that could make your life a little bit easier:

Make a list of all the effects of that change and the contexts in which they occur. In this way you will discover the moments the change will become relevant to one or other of the employees.

Ensure that when an employee searches for information in one of the contexts mentioned above, everything that is related to the change in question is immediately accessible.

Optimize the interaction of the employee with his digital workspace so that he performs as few searches in as few places. This means that the working environment is functioning based on processes and tasks rather than based on information categories. In most organizations you will find one form in one place, a procedure in another one, few other things in the third and the forth, when all these information you need are for a single process or task. Show them in an integrated manner, consolidated in one single place.

Do not consider that an email announcing the change solved something, even asking for an explicit confirmation from the recipients that they read and understood.

Notify repeatedly the important changes, always posting them on the first page of your organization’s intranet and in the dedicated pages for the processes and tasks that use them.

When it is clear for the employee that he has a place where he can find everything he is looking for and the changes are well flagged, then, they will become much faster and easier.

Each and every year the organizations spend large amounts of money for systems such as ERP, CRM or HRIS and do considerable efforts to manage in a reasonable way information like stocks, invoices, account balances, clients’ databases and others. These are operational information and the employees act on them mechanically.

There is another type of information that helps the employee to do his activities. It motivates on key aspects of the job, informs him on changes,educates him with regards to the best ways to do his job and connects him with other employees. We call this support information.

In order to do his job efficiently and effectively an employee needs both types of information readily available when he is looking for them.

Unfortunately, the support information is neither managed, nor funded as well as it is the case of the operational information. As a result, we see business problems related to the integration of new employees when trying to propagate changes or best practices or when employees need to interact with central services.e work for customers having mature systems and yet they are facing serious change and compliance management issues.

So what is wrong? The volume of information the regular employee is facing is higher than what he can realistically manage. The Information is continuously sent to the employee over all kind of channels or stored in complex repositories. The time the employee is required to perform a certain task he needs to start searching through all these unrelated repositories for answers and this affects the quality of his work.

Can you realistically hope to reduce the amount of information needed by an employee? Not quite.

Yet, what you can do is to group, sort and present this on a way that makes it easy for the employee to work with.

So, good support information management means that an employee searches for something and all the information related to that subject is gathered from various repositories are presented to him.

Instead of looking for information, the information is brought to you selected on the specified topic.

With each implementation we receive the confirmation that the proper management of the support information and a clean digital employee experience are the key for a good employee engagement, a higher compliance and a fluid change management.